Latest news with #ChemicalBrothers
Irish Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘My first proper job was Ents Officer at UCD. It was incredible'
Paul Davis has more than three decades of experience in the Irish and international events and entertainment industries. In 2013, he founded Davis Events Agency, which in 2023 was listed in the 2023 Global Eventex Top 100 Event Organisers and Agencies. Are you a saver or a spender? I would lean more towards being a spender than a saver. I've been running my business for a long time, and I think I recognise when something is a good investment. What was the first job you received money for, and how much were you paid? My first proper job was Ents Officer at UCD . It was incredible. Club culture was just arriving in Ireland and, as well as organising events all over the place, I got to bring amazing acts like the Chemical Brothers, The Shamen, Urban Cookie Collective and David Holmes in for gigs at the university. I was paid a few hundred pounds a month, but it was all about the fantastic experience and memories. Do you shop around for better value? I love getting a bargain in music and clothes – you can get amazing value in second-hand vinyl, in particular. Dublin was full of great second-hand and thrift shops in the 1990s before they died away, but it's great to see some coming back now. I was in San Francisco recently and had a brilliant time going around Haight Street and all the vintage stores. READ MORE What has been your most extravagant purchase, and how much did it cost? I spent £2,000 on a set of SL1210 decks when I was much younger. It was a massive expense for me at the time. I couldn't really afford them but I got them anyway. They were worth every penny. What purchase have you made that you consider the best value for money? When the Walkman came out, I thought it was the best thing ever invented. I love music so much and being able to access music whenever and wherever I went was a game changer. Likewise, when the iPod came out. It wasn't cheap, but being able to access even more music meant it was totally worth it. Is there anything you regret spending money on? It's not quite a regret but I wish I didn't have to have a car. I live in the city and ride my bike everywhere so having a car feels counterintuitive. I regularly use DublinBikes and the like in other cities, too. In Nice, for example, you can take a public bike at the airport and cycle into the city! Do you haggle over prices? I haggle because I like to get value, although I've been known to embarrass my family at times. Do you invest in shares and/or cryptocurrency? I have invested in shares. The concept makes sense to me because you're investing and helping to build a business large or small, albeit while hoping to get a return for yourself. Cryptocurrency doesn't feel tangible enough for me, so I haven't invested so far. Do you have a retirement or pension plan? At the moment, retirement doesn't seem to factor into my thinking. I have no plans in that area because I love what I do so much. Enjoying your job is a real gift, so it would be very hard to stop. I have a pension plan, however, which involves a set of funds that I manage myself. What was the last thing you bought, and was it good value for money? I recently bought another copy of Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset book, and I'm reading it again. It reminds me of the need to stay positive and to have a positive outlook. I love reading so, for me, a book is always great value. Have you ever successfully saved up for a relatively big purchase? It took me about a year to save up for the SL1210 decks. Have you ever lost money? Yes, when I was younger. I began organising gigs when I was a teenager. The nature of the business means you lose money more than you make – you've got to love it and figure out how to make a living out of it. Are you a gambler and, if so, have you ever had a big win? I'm not a gambler but when I was about 12, I made a pound from a bet on the Grand National. That was a big deal! These days, I occasionally take a punt during big racing festivals. What is your best habit when it comes to money? And your worst? I think my best is spending it on the right things. I'm not a big spender in general, but I'm happy to do so to look after family, have a holiday and the like. My worst is probably that I'm not careful enough with it. How much money do you have on you now? I keep an emergency €5 note in the back of my phone. That's it! In conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea
Business Mayor
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Block Rockin' Beats by The Chemical Brothers
Explosive, relentless and utterly electrifying, the Chemical Brothers ' ' Block Rockin' Beats ' is a seismic event that redefined the landscape of electronic music . Released as the opening track of the Manchester duo Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands Dig Your Own Hole , this iconic anthem epitomises TCB's ability to fuse big beat aggression with hypnotic grooves. This ain't just 'club music'. From the moment the bassline drops, the track exerts a gravitational pull. The sampled, swaggering vocal – taken from Schoolly D's 'Gucci Again' – demands attention, setting the tone for what follows: pounding drum loops, distorted synths, and a visceral energy that is packed anarchy. The track's layering is masterful – each beat lands like a punch, each sound twisting and colliding to build a crescendo of pure adrenaline. What makes it beautiful, though, is its precision within the chaos. This is finely honed craftsmanship. TCB engineers movement, tension and euphoric release in equal measure, making 'Block Rockin' Beats' a DJ's secret weapon, and endorphin agent. Decades after its arrival, its pulse still beats like some dark, glowing core.
Economic Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
Block Rockin' Beats by The Chemical Brothers
Explosive, relentless and utterly electrifying, the Chemical Brothers ' ' Block Rockin' Beats ' is a seismic event that redefined the landscape of electronic music . Released as the opening track of the Manchester duo Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands Dig Your Own Hole , this iconic anthem epitomises TCB's ability to fuse big beat aggression with hypnotic grooves. This ain't just 'club music'.From the moment the bassline drops, the track exerts a gravitational pull. The sampled, swaggering vocal - taken from Schoolly D's 'Gucci Again' - demands attention, setting the tone for what follows: pounding drum loops, distorted synths, and a visceral energy that is packed track's layering is masterful - each beat lands like a punch, each sound twisting and colliding to build a crescendo of pure adrenaline. What makes it beautiful, though, is its precision within the chaos. This is finely honed engineers movement, tension and euphoric release in equal measure, making 'Block Rockin' Beats' a DJ's secret weapon, and endorphin agent. Decades after its arrival, its pulse still beats like some dark, glowing core.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guide #177: Son of a Century is a gripping, timely series – and maybe the end of the antihero drama
Retired history teachers everywhere must be quietly lamenting that Mussolini: Son of the Century wasn't around when they were building their Twentieth Century Europe modules. Joe Wright's Italian-language TV adaptation of Antonio Scurati's novel, which has just arrived in full on Sky and Now, is a world away from the fuzzy VHS recordings of old war documentaries that served as the multimedia element of many of our GCSE history classes. Following Il Duce's faltering first steps towards domination, from establishing his fascist party, through the March on Rome to the installation of a dictatorship in Italy, Wright's eight-part drama has the fidgety energy of a student trying to make history more exciting and cool. 'What if the scene where blackshirted goons violently attack that socialist paper was shot in a stylised, Tarantino-ish way?'; 'Could we replace the characters with puppets here?'; 'Wouldn't it be cool if Mussolini played with a grenade on his desk in this scene?'; 'How about we soundtrack the whole thing with frenetic big beat scored by one of the Chemical Brothers?' Amazingly, for the most part this approach works well. The restlessness of Wright's direction feels suited to the roiling, change-filled era of Italian history it depicts, when socialism and fascism were vying to usurp the old order, and all manner of literary, technological and artistic movements were bubbling up. At the centre of this circus is Luca Marinelli's spectacular performance as Mussolini, a fourth-wall-breaking narrator-lead who seems as interested in convincing the TV audience of fascism's charms as he is the Italian public. This Mussolini seems more than a little inspired by the TV antiheroes of the past two decades, men who carried us along for the ride as they did terrible things: a dash of Walter White's sociopathy and scheming here; a sprinkling of Tony Soprano's brutishness and brittle self-doubt there – not to mention his hairline too. Framing Mussolini in such a way is a high risk strategy. One of the less enjoyable aspects of TV's golden age were the bad fans, viewers who cheered on TV's antiheroes in their worst moments. On its release Scurati's novel, which uses historical documents alongside Mussolini's omniscient narration to retell the tale of the rise of fascism through its instigator's eyes, was criticised by some historians for 'resurrecting the cult of the leader' at a time when the far-right was making gains in Italy. It's hard not to imagine the same criticism being levelled at Wright's adaptation (though it should be said that Italian reviews have been unanimously glowing so far). For his part, Wright has spoken in interviews of the need for the audience to feel 'seduced' by Mussolini, to grasp how a nation might have fallen under his sway. And certainly the series is at pains to undercut its lead character's stump speeches at every opportunity: Mussolini is portrayed as pompous and craven, ready to sell out his fellow fascists whenever the movement looks like it is about to go south. The cruelty and brutality of that movement is shown in unflinching detail. As it moves from violent rabble to terrifyingly efficient force, uncomfortable parallels with recent violent rabbles-turned-terrifyingly efficient forces will be felt. Son of the Century arrives on our screens at an interesting cultural moment. The past decade of populist and far-right political movements have brought ideas and figures considered fringe or extreme closer to the mainstream: people like Curtis Yarvin, a previously obscure US 'neoreactionary' thinker who yearns for the replacement of liberal democracy with a 'form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny' (vice-president JD Vance is reportedly a fan). The question for that mainstream, has been whether to go with option one: continue treating these ideas and figures as fringe and extreme – to 'no-platform' them, in essence; or option two: contend with them, but risk giving them oxygen to grow. For much of the past decade, it has felt like option one had won out. But then came Donald Trump's re-election in November, and with it the feeling that ignoring these fringe figures and ideas had either had no effect, or had been actively counterproductive. So now some are feeling it might be time to try option two. A case in point: on the eve of Trump's election the New York Times published an interview with Yarvin, arguing that 'given that [his ideas] are now finding an audience with some of the most powerful people in the country, Yarvin can't be so easily dismissed anymore'. Son of the Century too has more than a little of option two about it, reckoning with fascism in a way that some will find illuminating and others will feel is potentially dangerous. It feels emblematic of a new, charged cultural era. I wonder though if Son of the Century also signals something else: the definitive demise of the antihero drama. The TV zeitgeist already seems to have largely shifted away from the exploits of morally dubious men in the past few years – though Taylor Sheridan seems to be on a (actually pretty successful) crusade to keep them alive. But when a figure of such historical, outsized horror is being given the antihero drama treatment, where does the genre have left to go, what new moral depths does it have plumb? Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad's creator, used to describe the journey of Walter White, from cheery chemistry teacher to ruthless drug lord, as progressing from 'Mr Chips to Scarface'. Well, even that has nothing on the descent at the heart of Son of the Century. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
